


eidólon

by xianbeis



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: M/M, Memory Loss, Post-Canon, denouement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:09:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28531251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xianbeis/pseuds/xianbeis
Summary: The prince of the Underworld dies and dies again. Death incarnate in all his power is helpless to pluck him from the wheel of fate, cannot with his nimble fingers carve him from the loom of time and tuck him safely within the folds of his chiton.
Relationships: Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 84





	eidólon

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPYYYY NEW YEARRRR have some of...whatever this is. Takes place far post-epilogue, so spoilers are likely. I didn't tag with character death since 1) gods and 2) it's not explicit, but please be aware that 98% of the game cast are nowhere to be found.
> 
> Title from:
> 
> _All space, all time,_  
>  _(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,_  
>  _Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,)_  
>  _Fill'd with eidólons only._
> 
> Walt Whitman, Eidólon

The prince of the Underworld dies and dies again. Death incarnate in all his power is helpless to pluck him from the wheel of fate, cannot with his nimble fingers carve him from the loom of time and tuck him safely within the folds of his chiton. Forever will he be embraced and then expelled from the warm red womb of the Styx.

The House of Hades used to be a far livelier place, as ironic as the word “lively” may be to describe the nexus of the dead. Most have moved on from this plane to places even Thanatos cannot reach, leaving just the two of them and the hollow ribcage of Tartarus.

Zagreus to run, and Thanatos to watch over him.

“I am glad he will have you,” said the Queen, once. Thanatos will always remember her flaxen hair, paler and richer than gold against the penumbra of the pomegranate trees in the royal garden. “One day soon, I fear we will all be gone.”

“How could this be, your highness?”

“Mortals may forget or deny the existence of the forces who have shaped the earth they live upon, but they will always believe in death.”

And of course—Zagreus has lived without the worship of mortals for his entire life. He can, unlike so many others, live without them. His power is his own.

“I will.”

Persephone smiles, golden in the darkness.

\--

First, Zagreus turned the underworld upside-down trying to escape it.

Then, he started escaping to make sure that no one else could.

Now—now, Thanatos isn't sure what this is.

Peripeteia, perhaps, a reversal slower but no less devastating than the stories told during the mortal festivals that the Olympus gods loved so much. Perhaps they have all been walking upon the hinge of history, of story, for so long they never realized that they’ve been plunging headlong towards another side; the vast, the unknown.

\--

“What is this?” asks Zagreus, cupping the rich purple muscle still-beating in his hands. The blood spiders across the catacombs of his skin, staining the lines Thanatos knows so well.

 _Not enough,_ He does not say. _It will only prolong the inevitable. My sisters allow me to give this to you only because my foolishness amuses them._

“It will help you.”

“I have nothing to give to you in return.”

“It is a gift.”

“But—“

There is no time left. The dead howl wordlessly at the gates and Thanatos must answer them.

“Just take it, Zagreus. Please.”

“I don't even know your na—“

Thanatos turns, steps up and in between the ether.

\--

Thanatos never had much contact with Chaos, for all the sinews of lineage that tie them together. His primordial ancestor took a liking to Zagreus—of little surprise, everyone grows to like Zagreus given enough time—would bless him in his own strange way, garland him in power not quite emptiness.

They used to offer open portals into their dimension, but that was so very long ago. Zagreus can no longer easily pass through the caustic antimatter between them unscathed, the egg in his precious cabinet of curiosities that used to shield him long since obliterated with the rest.

Strange, how easily even things in their untimely realm can unmake themselves.

Thanatos has tried to find places in the fabric of the Underworld where the membrane between their dimensions is thin enough to rend, but even if Chaos had answers to the questions he wants desperately to ask, he knows they would not be easily earned.

\--

The well of Charon is cracked, the fountains drained dry.

It is more difficult to reach Elysium than it used to be, and it could never have been called easy to begin with. The many-headed beast of bone that guards the stairwell to the once-resting place of heroes has grown more hungry and vicious, ten and twenty heads eating one another endlessly. Zagreus had a quaint nickname for the hydra once, one he no longer has enough occasion to use.

Thanatos helps when he can, when he is able. Olympus sends no more blessings and more mortals die above their heads every day, so they must both choose their paths wisely. Whenever he finds a way to slay the beast and finally crawls through the golden doorways into the empty lagoons, Thanatos does his best to be there to lift him through it.

If there is ever a time Zagreus needs him there and he disappoints, they have not spoken of it.

The realm is still beautiful and bright, preserved in azure and celadon. Remnants of statues of heroes long forgotten hold up the walls of the realm, which stretch upwards towards the surface like arms in worship.

Zagreus is a shadow flying amongst the shining buttresses.

By now, he must trust Thanatos as a friend, for he marks his arrival with a reaction other than wary surprise. Perhaps even anticipation, the way a bear emerges from its den when the crocuses bloom, realizing that winter has spared it for another season.

There is a small pavilion near the arena that lies at the foot of the stairway up to Styx. Two rusting spears lean towards one another next to the waterfall. Zagreus always sits near them to rest; Thanatos wonders if he remembers who they mark.

There are no more heroes in Elysium, either to greet or challenge him.

Thanatos thinks of happy endings, and gold, and the price of flesh. He sits where Zagreus indicates, next to him on the dewy grass. Zagreus studies the firmaments with a genuine curiosity, and Thanatos takes the opportunity to look at him, really look. Once upon a time, they were young men entwined together here, hot and impatient, gleefully stealing time like the sticky-fingered children they were. Both princes, both boys still, swathed in all luxury and pleasure with jewels on their fingers, chasing the light of Ixion between each other’s mouths.

 _What are we to one another now?_ He wants to ask, but does not dare. _Of all things, why must this be something you cannot keep?_

“It feels like it should be empty here.” Zagreus looks pensive, his hand over his heart. Thanatos yearns to place his palm there, to feel his sweat, his skin improbably soft. He could do so with impunity, once, could do more than that on a whim, but he thinks that if he touches Zagreus now he will fly into a million pieces. “But it’s not. Do you know why?”

He inclines his head, brushes his hair out of his eyes. He wants to see Zagreus as clearly as he can, for as long as he is able.

“You are alive, Zag.”

“Oh!” Zagreus lights up, lush mouth curving in that way Thanatos adores. “And you as well?”

_In moments like this._

Rest is fleeting. All too soon, Zagreus stands and looks towards the next Chamber. “I’ll see you at the surface?”

“Yes.”

Another smile, so freely given. “Be safe.”

“I should be telling you that.”

When Zagreus turns away, Thanatos quickly takes his leave, can never quite bear to see him looking back again.

\--

The moon rises over Greece, huge and desolate.

Zagreus does not remember snow, and Thanatos could not adequately explain it to him. The prince of the underworld steps through the doors at last, and squints even though his eyes have long since become accustomed to the dark.

Thanatos is waiting for him as he promised. All is quiet in the valley.

“I made it.”

“You did.” Thanatos allows a smile to break over his face, a real one, the one he wants to give Zagreus all the time like the tear-shaped flowers that used to adorn his mother’s pyre.

Oh, how she did love them.

“...now what?”

That is the question. Thanatos looks up at the sky, then towards the stone threshold his fire-footed prince must cross so that he can start his journey once again. Like the rise and fall of the sun, which Zagreus will never know, always gone before the sunrise.

Thanatos was never much one for the daylight, anyhow.

There remains only the two of them now, Life and Death, one always guiding the other. Mortals and gods have moved on, left the rest of the temples empty. Thanatos does not know who the ones who have replaced them are, will never meet them so long as he still has a duty to carry out here. Touch the dead and sweep them towards their next destination, he knows not where. Protect Zagreus as he ascends, preserve his life until he makes it to the surface, for as many times as he is willing to go on.

There was once a king who was imprisoned in the deepest recesses of Tartarus, sentenced to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity as punishment for outsmarting the gods. For outsmarting Thanatos and binding him with his own chains.

Back when he thought that nothing could conquer Death, when he thought he couldn't want to be conquered. The poets would call that anagnorosis, the moment of recognition.

Once Hades left his desk empty for the last time, the intricate bureaucratic hierarchies and systems holding Tartarus together fell apart and apart and apart, to dust and dust and dust. Zagreus asked after the fate of the king once and Thanatos, bemused, went searching for him. Perhaps he was whisked away along with the other shades to that place beyond Death’s knowing, or in his boundless cleverness found another way back to the mortal realm. Whatever the case, by the time Thanatos concluded his search, Zagreus no longer remembered making such a request in the first place.

They have lived for so long, yet Thanatos still hungers for more time. He has always been the consummate soldier, neat and efficient with his work. It was always Zag that slyly hooked his finger into his belt when he turned to leave, could convince him to place the business of death aside for another measure with nothing more than a smile and a well-timed kiss.

But all things end. Thanatos knows this better than most.

Though perhaps, just this once—

“The moon is bright,” He says, and Zagreus joins him at the water’s edge. “We can watch the fish for a little while.”

“Fish?” It has been so long since Zagreus returned with an elusive sturgeon over his shoulder for the Head Chef, smelling of salt and grass.

“They live in the water. Come.”

Thanatos watches him carefully as he lowers himself onto the grass, different somehow from Elysium’s. More...textured, more solid, more difficult to ignore. He is testing the fates, in his own way. He has watched the Styx reclaim the prince again and again, in ways surreal and mundane, undoubtedly humorous to some unseen force in the universe. But he remains hale for now as he sits, cross-legged, at the lip of the pond.

The water is clear and very cold. Zagreus stays alive just a little longer, and Thanatos loves him for it.

“I don't see anything,” says Zag, after a moment, turning to look at Thanatos with an expression dangerously close to a pout.

“Be patient,” murmurs Thanatos. He wonders if Zag is aware of the heat of his own body, the pleasure that his nearness brings.

“I think...” Zag’s brow furrows, lips thinning in a pensive moue as he stares into the water. “There’s something I can’t...”

Thanatos is surprised. It has been so long since the prince was even aware that there were gaps in his memory.

Will there come a day when they will face each other as strangers, when all of the thousands of days between them are lost forever like the sorrows of a past life are drowned by the Lethe?

“What is it?”

“Your hair.” Zag reaches out, fingers brushing a lock that curls past his upturned hood. “It’s as long as it once was.”

The day he had become a man, the first time a mortal whispered to some unseen power to let her live to see another sunrise, Nyx had taken a slice of midnight and tenderly shorn his hair, casting the strands into the Styx where they were washed beneath the prow of his brother's new boat. It was perhaps the last time he felt her touch as a mother, though even now he knows her shroud lives within him.

He let his hair grow again as the world they once knew slowly faded away; out of a lack of priority, certainly, but perhaps also in trying to return in some small way to that time before, when they were all children again, tumbling through the halls before men began to fear Death. When Zagreus would run his fingers through it, offering something small and warm and alive that Thanatos didn't yet know how to accept.

Perhaps, for moments like this, he still finds reason to live. Not all is ended, as long as he can still sit here, hair pooling like moonlight in the hands of his beloved; breathing, breathing.

**Author's Note:**

> uhhhhh so this was not how I had planned to start 2021, but 120 hours of _Hades_ & one long-haired Than art, later and this launched itself out of my body with surprising force. I think about story structure all day every day for my day job, and it's been really invigorating to engage with the mechanics/dynamics of the game and how it dialogues with the narrative so I wanted to push on that a bit. I promise at one point I will 1) update _astrolabes_ , 2) write something that isn't a lowkey downer, 3) actually write the sexy bits I keep wobbling around.
> 
> ALSO I AM SORRY FOR THE MEG ERASUREEEEE
> 
> I had an aborted start on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/xianbeis) last year when I started posting fic again buttttt new year new post-grad school me and I'm going to try to be more active so please connect and tell me about how your year is going so far. It's been a hard ten months/year/life and I genuinely hope that this new year brings about well-deserved flourishing for you all. Thank you for reading!


End file.
